Green Lantern’s Light

At Slate’s Green Lantern blog, Nina Shen Rastogi takes a judicious look at nuclear energy, writing a bit like a person trying to understand the pros and cons.:

I thought nuclear reactors were an absolute no-go for environmentalists. But I keep hearing them touted as a clean energy source. What are nuclear energy's green credentials?

Here’s a pro:

For all this, it's worth noting that uranium is a very efficient energy source: One ton of natural uranium can produce the same number of kilowatt-hours as 16,000 tons of coal or 80,000 barrels of oil.

Here’s a con:

Advocates are fond of noting that nuclear power provides 70 percent of the country's "carbon-free" energy. But nuclear energy isn't really a zero-carbon system, since you still have to build power plants, mine and enrich uranium, and transport processed fuel, all of which typically rely on CO2-emitting fuel sources.

But she understands that we’ve got to live in the world as it is and this is how it is. However, those activities that rely on electricity can be done where it is supplied by nuclear energy – a net positive.

Conclusion:

The Lantern doesn't find herself particularly freaked out by atomic energy.

Well, that’s good.

After all, isn't the notion that you don't bequeath problems to your descendants a major tenet of environmentalism? At the same time, global warming is itself a dire legacy, and every energy technology has its pitfalls. So if nuclear power can play a role in cooling our planet, the Lantern thinks it deserves to stay on the table.

Nicely done, especially for the nuclear-dubious. Do read the whole thing.

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The energy that power’s Green Lantern’s lantern has never really been completely pinned down. We do know that it emits radiation and that the color yellow is as effective against it as lead is against other kinds of radiation. Here’s as good an explanation as any from the Green Lantern wiki (you knew there had to be one):

The Central Power Battery, also known as the Great Power Battery, was built by the immortal Guardians of the Universe after they had abandoned their homeworld of Maltus and settled on the planet Oa. This massive device served as a reservoir for all of their combined cosmic power which was based on the Green Light of Will in the Emotional Spectrum and was an edifice created from a single crystal. At some point in its early history, the Guardians captured the fear elemental known as the Parallax Entity and trapped it within the Central Power Battery. This the cosmic being dormant but also created a "yellow impurity" which prevented future Oan constructs from functioning properly on objects coated in the color yellow.

I think the explanation for the yellow impurity was introduced later. Creators John Broome and Gil Kane, in 1961, likely wanted to create a hero infused with the potentials of nuclear energy, as filtered through 50s science fiction, and yellow was a stand in for lead (as well as a hedge against making their hero unbeatable.)

Like most DC comics and characters of that time – The Atom (who  can shrink to the size of an atom), The Flash and Adam Strange - Green Lantern is borne of scientific principle infused with imagination and speaks to the fantasies and dreams of kids raised during the atomic age, the space race and the strong push for scientific education and achievement undertaken by the Kennedy administration.

So The Green Lantern, which is used by Slate for its environmental blog, might be better suited for a blog about nuclear energy or science in general.(Swamp Thing might be better for an environmental column.) But that’s all right. If it leads people to Green Lantern, good enough.

One of the most famous of comic book covers: the end of the Broome-Kane appreciation of science and the beginning of doubt in social institutions, including scientific ones, courtesy Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. Welcome to the seventies.